Using Videos In Your Evergreen Content Marketing Strategy

Evergreen content should be at the heart of your marketing efforts. What’s more, videos should play a huge role in your evergreen content strategy. Making evergreen video content is a great way to stay relevant and consistently capture new audiences.

Let’s talk about how powerful evergreen videos can be, how to create them, and the different types of videos to consider.

What is evergreen content?

You can split your marketing content into two main types: timely content and evergreen content. Timely content focuses on present events, such as trending topics, seasons, holidays, or product launches. It can result in a quick spike in reach and audience engagement, but the effect is limited to a short period. After the event ends, the content becomes irrelevant.

Evergreen content is the opposite. It’s any type of marketing content that stays relevant and in demand long after it’s published. It doesn’t rely on seasonal trends or current affairs to grab eyeballs. Instead, it targets learners (rather than experts) and provides valuable information and insights that generally withstand the test of time.

With evergreen content, you can draw in a steady stream of new visitors without having to put out fresh content all the time. Not only that, but evergreen content can also help you:

• Boost your search engine rankings: Evergreen content ranks higher as search engines recognize its long-term value to users.
• Establish your business as an authority: Consistent, timeless content positions you as an industry expert and makes you a go-to resource for customers.
• Reinforce brand recognition: Regular encounters with your evergreen content strengthen users' familiarity with your brand.
• Generate leads: For all of the reasons above, evergreen content is more likely to prompt visitors to turn into leads.

Why you should add videos to your evergreen content strategy

Evergreen content comes in many forms, from blog posts and videos to infographics and podcasts. Videos might take more time and money with all the planning, shooting, and editing involved, but if you ask us, they’re totally worth the effort! Here’s why:

1. Videos can be super engaging and impactful

Did you know that our brains process visual content much faster than they process text? And in a recent survey, 49% of people admitted feeling like their attention span is shorter than it used to be and 47% reported believing that “deep thinking” is a thing of the past.

Since videos combine visuals and sound, they’re a powerful tool for grabbing attention and communicating complex ideas effectively and quickly. And they can immediately tap into our emotions, which can be quite challenging to achieve with written content. This unique capability makes video an invaluable asset for creating memorable and impactful messaging.

2. Videos can help boost sales

Think about it: When you see a product demo, hear a real customer’s story about how the product helped them, or watch a simple video on how the product works, aren’t you more convinced to buy it? It’s because seeing products in action or hearing real experiences makes it easier for folks to trust the brand.

3. Videos can improve your search engine rankings

A while ago, we looked at some numbers and found out that video can be an effective way to increase the average time spent on your website. That can place your site higher in search engine results.

While Google hasn’t said that visitor engagement affects rankings, many SEO pros have seen a link between the two. Basically, if people spend lots of time on a page, search engines might view it as important and rank it higher.

4. People are more likely to share videos

A recent survey by Wyzowl found that 51% of people are more likely to share videos with their friends than any other type of content, making video the most shareable type of online content.

It’s probably because videos are engaging and quicker to digest, and they elicit emotions. When you share a video on social, you’re not just reaching your regular crowd, but you also have a better chance of tapping into new groups of folks who haven’t seen your brand before.

5. Videos help you connect with your audience on a more personal level

With videos, you can put a face and voice to your brand. By featuring real people, behind-the-scenes looks, and candid moments, you’re letting your audience see the human elements behind your brand, not just your products or services. This authenticity builds trust and relatability.

6. Videos are easy to repurpose

You can create a treasure trove of content with just one video. Just throw it into a video editor and chop it up into bite-sized clips for social media or your help center. And you can even turn your video into an audio podcast, a blog post, or an infographic!

How to create evergreen video content

Want your content to stand the test of time? A solid evergreen content strategy is the key. Here are some tips to make sure your videos remain relevant and will always strike a chord with viewers:

Choose timeless topics

You don’t decide the fate of an evergreen video — your viewers do. In other words, you want your videos to feature information that will keep resonating with your target audience years down the line.

Pick topics that aren’t tied to current events or fleeting trends. You should also make sure that the topic will remain relevant for at least several years. And base it on the keywords you’d like your site to rank for.

Tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, and AnswerThePublic.com can help you find out what your audience is curious about. You can also check the “People Also Ask” section on Google for more content ideas or even repurpose your top-performing articles into video content.

Make high-quality videos

When people watch a dated video, it’s like looking at a website that hasn’t been updated since 2003. It feels out of touch and not in the know. Timeless videos, on the other hand, give off an air of authority. They feel current and relevant, no matter how old they are.

To keep your videos from becoming outdated too quickly, you want to give them a classic and polished appearance that doesn’t scream a specific era. That means going all out on crystal clear audio, smooth visuals, and top-tier editing.

And, for the love of all things evergreen, avoid video trends. While they might give you a quick spike in views today, they can make your content feel outdated tomorrow — literally.

Be mindful of dated references

Your content’s longevity isn’t just about the visuals. It’s also about the words you choose. Avoid using specific dates or even pop culture mentions because they can inadvertently age your content.

The only exception is when it’s historically significant. In such a case, be sure not to use casual references to time like “recently” or “last year.” Instead of saying, “Artificial intelligence became popular last year,” go with “Artificial intelligence rose in popularity in 2022.” This keeps your content clear and timeless.

Optimize your video for search

Good evergreen videos have the magic of staying relevant and consistently drawing viewers over time. But it doesn’t just happen on its own — you have to make your videos easily discoverable. That means getting the SEO right from the get-go.

It might take a while to see SEO results, but once you do, they’ll be consistent and they can last a pretty long time.

Identify the areas that may need to be maintained or updated in the future

Evergreen content comes in two forms: content that always stays relevant no matter what and content that might lose relevance and importance over time if not updated to reflect changing trends and technology.

If your video falls into the latter category, make sure you keep it updated over time. An AI voice generator can come in handy here.

The best types of evergreen videos to make

You can add just about any type of video to your evergreen content strategy, but some perform much better than others. Let’s dive into some types of evergreen videos that can prove their worth time and again:

Explainer videos

Think of an explainer video as a friendly pitch for your brand or product. It’s a one- to two-minute video that showcases how your product works and why it’s the right solution for the viewer.

What makes explainer videos particularly suitable for evergreen content is that they stay useful for a long time. And if there are any changes in your product or its features, you can quickly edit the video to keep it relevant.

Take a look at how MarketScale uses animation, live action, and a compelling voiceover to create a 60-second video that explains the key details of their product:

Product demos

Besides providing a walkthrough of your product and its different features, product demos emphasize the value your product will add to your customers’ lives.

Once you’ve created a demo or tutorial video, you can use it for months or years — and only update it when there’s a change in the product. That makes product demos an excellent choice for evergreen content.

Let’s talk about when we launched our webinar feature, Wistia Live. We put together a demo with a presenter — Delphine, the product manager who spearheaded this project — and screencasts to showcase the feature in action. Check it out:

Now, when someone Googles how to do a webinar with Wistia Live, the video shows up in the search results. Pretty evergreen, huh?

How-to videos

When surveying businesses for our 2024 State of Video Report, we found that product videos were the most common type of video content they created in 2023. And educational videos came in second.

Know what type of video falls into both categories? How-to videos. And they’re especially great for driving traffic to your site because people are always searching the internet for quick instructions they can apply right away.

You can add these videos to product pages, blog posts, and newsletters — and even share them on social media.

As long as you choose topics and instructions that won’t change in the foreseeable future, how-to videos can be a great addition to your evergreen content strategy. Just make sure you keep your how-to videos up-to-date.

Want to see an example? Check out this video MyBinding created:

Thought leadership videos

Thought leadership videos can be interviews with industry pros, talks by your company leaders, or even case studies and reports. What’s key? Picking timeless topics. These videos shine because they boost your brand’s trust and authority. Check out this example from our Talking Too Loud podcast:

Notice our topic choice: product positioning. It’s something that’ll always matter to marketers, regardless of how much time has passed since we shared this episode.

Webinar recordings

Webinars are an excellent way to generate leads and drive interest in your products/services, even long after they end.

To repurpose webinar recordings into evergreen content, create a dedicated section on your website where visitors can enjoy on-demand access to these webinars. Plus, you can share the recordings in your newsletters.

Take a cue from Moz. They have a page that’s chock-full of on-demand webinars about SEO. Visitors will find some of these webinars useful months or even years down the road.

Customer testimonials

Customer testimonials can be powerful evergreen videos because they showcase real experiences and authentic feedback.

While products or trends may change, the impact a product or service has on a person’s life or business remains relatable over time. Testimonials tap into the timeless themes of trust, satisfaction, and personal transformation.

As long as the core benefit of your product or service stays consistent, these genuine endorsements will continue to resonate with future audiences, making them an enduring asset in your content strategy.

Take this customer testimonial video from Dropbox:

You might be surprised to learn that Dropbox created this video in 2014. It goes to show that high-quality video production pays off, doesn’t it?

Brand videos

Brand videos focus on telling the story of your company: its values, mission, and the core message. Because they center around the foundational aspects of a company, which typically don’t change rapidly, they inherently have an evergreen nature.

Take a look at this “about us” video BambooHR put together:

What makes this video evergreen is the fact that even after the featured team members leave the company, the values, experiences, and insights they shared during their tenure remain a testament to the company’s ethos.

Ready to make evergreen content with video?

Whether you want to repurpose evergreen videos for different channels or create new videos, Wistia’s got what you need: a screen and webcam recorder, a video editor, analytics, and more. Take a look at what Wistia has to offer and start making evergreen marketing videos today!